Crisis in Jammu govt hospitals due to daily wagers strike

Nagender Jamwal
With the ongoing strike of All Medical (Mech) Workers’ Union, the grave situation has arisen in Government Medical College and Hospital (GMC&H), Jammu and associated hospitals, particularly Super Specialty Hospital (SSH), Jammu.
For the sixth day the SSH continued to suffer the failure of logistics owing to indefinite strike by workers of Mechanical Division of GMCH. Strikes by employees, particularly the daily wagers who have been rendering service for more than twenty years but have not been regularized despite tall promises made to them are becoming frequent. It is a difficult and complicated matter to break the strike of casual workers who are handling the infrastructural services like supply of water, electricity, Air Conditioning plant, laboratories and the rest of it.
About 102 need based workers for running AC plants, Gas plants, lifts, sewerage plants, besides electricity and water supply are engaged by the GMCH Jammu. Out of these 102 workers, 62 alone are working in SSH Jammu and about 30 are engaged in GMC Jammu. All the 102 need-based workers have struck work and revived their old demands that have never been fulfilled or addressed satisfactorily by the Hospital administration. The striking workforce is demanding payment of their pending wages of last 25-30 months, regularization of their services and creation of a new Head of Mechanical employees so that they can timely get salary.
Sources said, “For the second day no dialysis could be done in the hospital where 20-30 dialysis are done daily. Owing to lack of water conducting of dialysis had to be stopped.”
Power is managed by mechanical department of the hospital and with their hectic efforts all the Air Conditioners are working.
Officials said, “Only one lift has been working restsare out of order due to impact of strike in SSH.”
With this not only the patients and the paramedical staff even the doctors are also feeling greatly embarrassed. No X-Rays can be taken and no medical machine works. This is the horrible situation in the SSH. This has forced the patients and their wards to refer to private clinics which the poor people hardly can afford. But under the condition of necessity, they are obliged to private clinics. It has also been reported that the pipes of water supply unit have been broken and the station has become water logged causing damage to the motors.
Talking to Newspoint, XEN Mechanical wing, Engineer Ashok Singh said, “All the essential items viz oxygen plant, water supply, electricity and others are all functional, our team render all these services. Our team members do 24X7 services to hospitals so that no patients would suffer due to this strike.”
When contacted Principal GMC & Hospital, Dr Zahid Gillani in this regard, he was unavailable for the comments.